Lunar Double

“Two moons, two moons! Wake up man. You don’t want to miss this.” He woke me up from deep weekend sleep. I must have had a blank look. He pointed to the window. “See there, two moons in the sky.” Still lying on the bed, I turned my sleepy eyes toward the window. He was right. Two pale moons, side by side. ‘Yes’ I agreed, ‘two moons. Now get some sleep.’   I closed my eyes turning to the other side.

Ravish, my cousin, room partner and best friend was not ready to leave it at that. “C’mon man, we cannot just keep sleeping after witnessing a wonder like this.” He shook me from behind. He pulled my hand asking me to get up. I cursed the astronomical wonder that had to happen on that weekend night, and sat up.

It must have been around two and half hours in the early Friday morning. The weekend spirits seldom settle down in two hours.

We were both sitting on my bed now trying to get some explanation as to why there are two moons. ‘It’s the drink’ I suggested through my closed eyes and yawning mouth. ‘We should not buy it again.’ “Huh” he dismissed me with a wave of his hand and was lost in thought for a few seconds. “It could be something like the Big Bang. The moon just broke in two!” I saw sleep fleeing his eyes.  ‘But…’ He didn’t let me complete. “A closer look. How can we take a closer look? Do we have a telescope here?”

A Telescope! The last I had my hands on a binocular was when I visited my friend during college days. He was a bird watcher, watching birds taking bath at a stream near his house! ‘Why don’t we go to the terrace for a closer look?’ “Not a bad idea, you go get the keys from the security” came his orders.

Sleep had deserted me too. Sense hadn’t. Waking someone up at two thirty was criminal. I retracted on my idea. ‘Let’s take a closer look from our window.’ He wasn’t convinced. “What more can you see from here? Let’s break open the terrace door.” I had already moved towards the window, in awe (and to some degree, in sorrow that something so romantic as the full moon is going plural all of a sudden.)

‘Lo, behold!’ I rubbed my eyes and took a second closer look. The second moon was moving away from the first. The moons have drifted apart. Something the scientists believe took millions of years, has hardly taken ten minutes to happen!

Wait a minute. Did I see a hand like shape near the second moon? The picture is clear now. ‘It’s no moon damn it! It’s the light from the crane!’  How did we forget the construction site just behind our building? And this crane had to be positioned in such a way the lamp on top looked just like the moon in the dusty sky!

We sat in silence waiting for the other to speak. Since neither of us had anything left to prove, we preferred silence, the golden silence to prevail till well into the morning…